Dear reader, I write to you once more with tales of distress and misery in relation to getting around the world.
This episodes subject is none other than budget airlines.
This episodes subject is none other than budget airlines.
I had the misfortune to travel easyjet from Naples recently, hot on the heels of a flight courtesy of my other least favourite airline Ryanair. I was amazed to discover that between the two experiences, easyjet was actually the most unpleasant. The situation was exacerbated by an inability of my fellow travellers to appreciate the following two things:
Firstly, actually taking the phrase ‘cattle class’ literally is an error. Despite the airline doing it’s utmost to treat us like animals, bunching together, pushing and jostling and barking at each other doesn’t help anybody, and in fact is counter productive.
Secondly. That bit of paper the nice people gave you when you checked in with a seat number on it. The seat number on it actually means plop your arse on that particular seat. What happens if you decide arbitrarily to put yourself somewhere else is that we play a deeply annoying game of human solitaire where you or someone else has to move around the cabin looking for the empty seat. Cue confusion and delay. Seat rows on airplanes I personally believe are actually quite easy to understand. If you look along a row of seats, somewhere above it will be a handy indicator (called, usefully, a ‘row number’) and an indication of which seat is which (this is usually a letter from the roman alphabet, generally starting from ‘A’ at the left of the airplane as you face the front, working up a later letter depending on what type of airplane you’re on). The combination of number and letter shows you where to sit. You should sit there.
Funnily enough, nobody was more surprised than I to juxappose the two airlines of misery and find that not having assigned seats appeared to make it less dire. Admittedly my recent data sample is one flight of each airline, and I do not endorse Ryanair. In fact travelling with either provider is less preferable to me than crawling on my stomach to my destination upon a road paved with week old used shit and glass filled nappies.